METRO NEWS BRIEFS: NEW JERSEY

Published: January 12, 1999

TRENTON—
AIDS activists said yesterday that they would bus hundreds of residents of Newark, Jersey City and other urban areas to the State House this morning for a rally to protest Gov. Christine Todd Whitman's refusal to permit clean-needle exchange programs, hours before the Governor's annual State of the State address.

''Our Governor is going to paint a very rosy picture, and we object,'' said Diana McCague, a rally organizer and the former director of the Chai Project, a needle exchange program in New Brunswick.

''There's a lot of people in the state suffering and attention needs to be drawn to that,'' Ms. McCague said.

Proponents of needle exchange believe it curbs the spread of AIDS by allowing addicts to exchange used syringes for clean ones.

But Mrs. Whitman has rejected the recommendation of her advisory panel to legalize needle exchanges because, she has said repeatedly, that would send a confusing message about drug use.